Monday, August 26, 2002

"At best, the lessons we’ve learned from industry’s work with EDI have shown us that:

Defining standard vocabularies is difficult and time-consuming.

Once defined, standards don’t adapt well.

People don’t implement standards correctly anyway.

Today’s Web services scandal is that:

The hype around dynamic discovery is overblown.

Vendors aren’t focused on the semantic element of the problem.

One wonders if the technology’s evolution is not misdirected."

That's probably why documents should be the primary focus and the way you send bytes and bits is of secondary importance. Build your vocabularies, define your semantics, structure your documents, then talk about SOAP, REST or pigeon mail to deliver them.Posted to services, xml @ 9:15:27 AM ( comments)

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Jon Udell: Road to managed code. "What .Net will do for the server family, sooner rather than later, is present a consistent set of interfaces to programmers. These interfaces will live in managed space as part of the .Net Framework and will enable any .Net language to control the servers. [...] the server products will become a set of components that can be scripted using .Net languages. This arrangement will enable developers to extend individual servers more productively, and it will be a huge win when -- as is typical -- they yoke different servers together in complex solutions." Interesting. Managed code is one of the key concepts of .NET Framework.Posted to architecture, services @ 9:40:48 AM ( comments)

Friday, August 09, 2002

IBM was quick to release implementation of BPEL4WS called BPWS4J the very same day specification was published (which is today, August 9). More info from one of the co-authors, Sanjiva Weerawarana: "BPWS4J consists of two parts: an engine and an editor. The BPWS4J Engine is an all-Java implementation of BPEL4WS that runs in a servlet container. The BPWS4J Editor is an Eclipse plugin that can be used with Eclipse v2.0+ (http://www.eclipse.org/)."Posted to services, xml @ 4:15:25 PM ( comments)

As it turns out, Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS or WS-BPEL) represents the merging of WSFL and XLANG specs. Wow! Two other specs. WS-Coordination: Describes an extensible framework for providing protocols that coordinate the actions of distributed applications. WS-Transaction: Describes coordination types that are used with the extensible coordination framework described in WS-Coordination.Posted to services, xml @ 4:12:08 PM ( comments)

CNET: Tech giants back new Web services. "Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services. The first specification--called Business Process Execution Language for Web Services--is a programming language for defining how to combine Web services to accomplish a particular task. Web services are emerging methods of writing software that allows businesses to interact via the Internet. The second, WS-Coordination, describes how individual Web services within that task interact. A software programmer, for example, can stitch together Web services into a sequence of operations to accomplish a particular task. The third specification, called WS-Transaction, is used to ensure that transactions all complete successfully or fail as a group." I'm wondering what are the relationships between newly created BPEL4WS, and XLANG (Microsoft), WSFL/WSXL (IBM) and WSCL (HP) specs?Posted to services, xml @ 2:19:24 PM ( comments)

Sunday, July 21, 2002

Sam Ruby: REST + SOAP. "In reality, there aren't two sides. There are at least four: Everything is a resource. Everything is a get. Everything is a message. Everything is a procedure." I think Sam again got it right. It's not about on what side you are, it's about how you can productively use both approaches. Posted to services, xml @ 12:03:48 AM ( comments)

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Amazon API. Cool, Amazon releases their a web service API! Interfaces to the Amazon API are an rpc/encoded SOAP endpoint described with WSDL and a raw XML over HTTP endpoint described using XML schemas & prose. Savvy move. There are already some quite interesting uses of the API: BookWatch combines RSS, the Google API and the Amazon API; and Similarities Graph creates diagrams of the similarities between books. For fun, check out the Similarities Graph for C# Essentials. When looking at the API one thing I noticed was both the WSDL and XSDs type everything as string even if a more specific schema type exists. For example, in the SOAP API /Details/ImageUrlSmall is typed as xs:string, I would have expected this to be xs:anyURI. Any thoughts on why they chose this route? [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] I would also love to see the date of release to be typed as date, but I agree with Sam: they took the least common denominator (LCD) approach to maximize interop. I just wonder, when will be the time when we don't need to think about LCD to interop? Seems like I still have a lot of work to do with SOAP::Lite.Posted to services @ 8:48:43 AM ( comments)

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

More from Phil Wainewright (Loosely Coupled Weblog): Christensen on standards and componentization. "The challenge facing us is to define the core web services standards for componentization in a way that will unleash and extend innovation, rather than embrace and extinguish it."Posted to services @ 7:55:10 AM ( comments)

Loosely Coupled: Forrester warns of web services wildfire. "These historical parallels highlight the one overriding challenge that CIOs will face with web services — how to manage the anarchy of a major change in computing technology, without suppressing the innovation that will be required to take advantage of the opportunities that it is sure to bring. The lesson of history is that the 'safe choice' of sticking with established big-name vendors will lead many enterprises into expensive wild goose chases down tortuous and bruising blind alleys. Making the right choices will demand a lot of imagination and hands-on involvement from those CIOs — along with a recognition that neither Gartner nor Forrester nor any other analyst is going to be in a position to provide all the answers."Posted to services @ 7:49:54 AM ( comments)